


the idea of growing old

by daisysusan



Series: in other words [4]
Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisysusan/pseuds/daisysusan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris thought kids would be something that happened to other people, but maybe he'd come to that conclusion a little hastily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the idea of growing old

It had really, legitimately never occurred to Chris to even think about kids. They were this sort of vague, intangible thing that happened to other people. He neither liked nor disliked them, they just ... were.

Until Randi came to visit for Mark's birthday, that is.

She brought her kid, a little girl named Hannah who smiled at everything and wanted nothing more than to play Ring Around the Rosy with Dustin over and over until they fell into the grass, too dizzy to stand.

It made perfect sense, _of course_ , that Dustin would be good with kids; he was only about half an adult as it was, bouncy and smiling and full of silly stories. Really, the only reason Chris hadn’t thought of it is that they were never actually around kids.

But now he’s standing in the shade and watching Dustin get pinned to the ground and tickled by a giggling three-year-old in a garishly pink dress and—well, he thinks he could probably get used to seeing that.

“She wears that dress about four days a week,” a voice next to him says.

Chris turns to Randi and grins. “She literally wouldn’t let us put anything else on her this morning,” she continues.

“Am I supposed to think that’s cute or weird?” he asks.

“I don’t know, Hughes. How much do you value your life?”

He laughs. “In that case, it’s adorable.”

Chris and Dustin stay later than anyone except Randi, who’s staying in the guest room and thus doesn’t really count, because the only appropriate way to end a birthday party is by getting tipsy with your best friends. Hannah, after declaring Dustin her new teddy bear and then eating entirely too much cake, fell asleep on his shoulder and no one has wanted to dislodge her.

Her hand is curled loosely around the neck of Dustin’s t-shirt and her wispy curls flutter when he shifts her gently to a more comfortable position against his hip. Chris feels something akin to longing.

Settling in next to Dustin on the sofa, he rubs a hand lightly down Hannah’s back.

Randi looks over at him, arch and knowing.

\--

The thoughts linger, like an almost-transparent overlay on his life, showing Chris snippets of possibility. In the corner of the living room, he almost sees Dustin laughing with a little girl or boy, and in the kitchen he can almost picture himself making dinner one-handed, resting a toddler against his hip. He starts wondering, absently, if they really need a second guest bedroom, and what it would be like to curl up every night to read bedtime stories to some faceless child he can’t quite imagine.

He doesn’t say anything to Dustin, not yet, because he isn’t sure what it all means.

But Dustin’s quiet, too, and his eyes linger on the ever-closed door of the nicer guest bedroom.

\--

For all that, Chris isn’t quite prepared when Dustin sets his knife and fork down deliberately over dinner a few nights later, and says, “Have you ever thought about kids?”

He considers, for a moment, deflecting and hiding back inside himself, telling Dustin that of course he thinks about kids, because they represent a significant part of the world’s population. But if there’s anyone who deserves better, it’s Dustin. If Chris is honest with himself, the question was probably rhetorical anyway; he knows Chris has thought about it as surely as Chris knows that Dustin has.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “You?”

Dustin nods. “Yeah. Not a ton, but I’ve thought about it.”

Chris measures his response carefully, not entirely sure of what he’s afraid will slip out but wary nonetheless. “What have you thought?”

“Nothing really specific,” Dustin says. “Just that maybe we ought to talk some.”

“Is there anything in particular that you want to talk about?” Chris asks.

Dustin leans back into his chair as far as he can, and Chris watches the muscles of his neck work as he swallows. After a brief pause, he sits up straight again and says, in that incredibly open way that Chris has never understood, “Having a kid could be nice. You know, an innocent mind to corrupt. And by corrupt, I mean keep away from Mark at all costs.”

Despite himself, Chris laughs a little. “I”m not sure Mark should be allowed around children unsupervised,” he says, but then he schools his face and adds, “I don’t know, Dustin. I’ve been thinking about it and, I just—well, are you sure it’s a good idea?”

“No,” Dustin answers bluntly. “But are you sure it’s a bad idea?”

“I—No,” Chris says, honest.

With that, Dustin stands up. He walks over toward Chris, and says, “We’re on the same page, then.” He presses a quick kiss to Chris’s cheek and finishes, “You can finish working through everything in your head now. I know you want to.”

\--

For the next week, Chris runs a lot.

He runs because it clears his head and gives him time to think, and he runs because sitting around in the house makes it hard to rationally sift through the pros and cons of the whole—situation.

While he runs, he thinks about working late, because he loves his job and so does Dustin, and about how young they really are (and a little about about having sex on the couch when the movies they rent turn out to be boring).

But he also thinks about all the moments he could almost picture, and the look on Randi’s face when she watched Hannah, and unconditional love, and the look on Dustin’s face when Hannah fell asleep on his shoulder.

After he sorts through that, as best he can, he starts to consider what Dustin is probably thinking about, how he’ll be worrying a little about things that never even occurred to Chris, and how he’ll question his maturity, and genuinely believe that, because Mark tells him that he acts like a child about once a week, he’s not enough of an adult to have his own child.

When he gets back from his run that day, he kisses Dustin soundly as soon as he gets home; Dustin makes a face and starts to mock-complain about the sweat. Before he has time to voice the words, though, Chris pulls him toward the bathroom with a broad smile.

\--

Later, clean (and then dirty and then clean again, but the point is that neither of them smells of sweat anymore), they’re both sprawled across the bed. Ostensibly, Chris is reading, but he’s actually half dozing and half watching Dustin work, absorbing maybe page of his book every ten minutes. Dustin, on the other hand, is completely focused, fingers flying over his laptop keys.

Chris reaches out and touches his ankle, letting his fingers ghost over the pale skin. Dustin looks up from his computer and smiles. “Hey,” he says softly, “What’s up?”

“You were right, you know.”

Dustin’s lips quirk a little. “What about?”

“Kids,” Chris answers, earnest to Dustin’s playfulness.

“Oh?”

Biting his lip, Chris looks down and watches his fingers run up and down Dustin’s leg. “It would be nice.” He pauses, considering but—well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “Is it something you want to talk about seriously? Because I’d like to.”

The answering smile on Dustin’s face is wide and honest, and Chris feels himself matching it involuntarily. “It’s definitely something we should consider,” Dustin says.

\--

It doesn’t sink in for a while, not until Chris gets home entirely too late from a frighteningly dull function Mark had dragged him to after Eduardo had to go to New York. (Chris is pretty sure that he “had” to go to New York just to escape spending three hours listening to a middle-aged man speak in a monotone about something that went completely over the heads over everyone in the room.) But he does get home, and what he comes home to is Dustin curled on the sofa, not with his laptop but with a small library of brochures and pamphlets.

Once he’s standing behind Dustin, a hand resting softly against his shoulder, he realizes what they’re for.

Dustin looks up at him, smiles half honest and half devious. “I’m just doing some research.”

“Yeah?” Chris says, looking over the piles of paper surrounding Dustin. “These are all about adoption.”

“I figured you’d like it better,” Dustin says. “Getting to help a kid who needs it and all.”

For a moment, Chris is completely taken aback by Dustin and the ease with which he dissects all the feelings Chris himself can’t always parse. He smiles, mostly to keep the more overwhelming feelings from slipping out, and moves to sit next to Dustin. “So, what have you found?”

\--

There’s a baby girl—Lily, her name is Lily—asleep on Chris’s shoulder. Her mouth is slightly open and he can feel warm puffs against his neck. She’s eight months old—eight months they’d spent trudging through bureaucracy and paperwork and, for Dustin anyway, a disconcerting number of books about developmental psychology.

Chris kind of never wants to put her down.

Dustin watches them, his eyes wide and expressive, and Chris wonders what he’s seeing, if it’s anything like what he saw when Dustin first picked Lily up. He could ask, he supposes, but he likes the quiet.

He’s sitting in a new chair, in a newly-redone room, still a little amazed that it actually happened, that he’s holding Lily and Dustin is standing in the doorway, head against the frame and looking like he almost wants to reach out and touch.

“Chris,” he says softly, “We should put her to bed.”

“Yeah, we should,” Chris answers with a cautious nod, not wanting to disturb Lily. He tries to dislodge her gently, but her small hand closes on his shirt and doesn’t let up. From the doorway, he can feel Dustin smirking.

“Do you need a hand?” he asks, his voice hinting at laughter. Chris nods ruefully.

Together, they gingerly pry her off Chris’s shirt and settle her into the crib, where she snuffles softly but stays asleep. He stands over it, watching her for a moment, and feels Dustin’s arm curl around his waist.

“Wow,” Dustin says, letting his head drop onto Chris’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Chris whispers. “Yeah.”

After a pause, and so quiet that Chris can barely hear him, Dustin says, “Are you scared?”

He exhales hard and answers, “God, yes.”

“Me too,” Dustin says. “We’re going to have to teach her right from wrong, and how to play video games, and fend off potential boyfriends—”

“Or girlfriends,” Chris says, a little wry, mostly so that he doesn’t think too hard about all of it. He’s already pretty attached to the tiny girl asleep in front of them, and the idea of her growing up too quickly makes his heart tighten uncomfortably. She’s already so much bigger than the first time they met her. It’s all kind of overwhelming.

Dustin pulls away a little, and turns Chris to face him. “Hey, don’t freak out on me. I can feel you worrying. It’ll be okay, I promise.”

Chris smiles a little weakly, and Dustin leans forward to kiss him, just a soft press of lips. “Besides, you’ve met Eduardo’s parents. Even pretty crappy parenting can turn out some amazing kids.”

\--

It’s Mark’s birthday again, and this time Chris is the one pinned to the ground by a giggling toddler, with Dustin watching him half smug and half loving. Lily is giddy—too much cake and too many people cooing over her—but she’s also determined to bury him in the bits of grass she’s pulling out of Mark’s lawn.

Dustin, of course, is being absolutely no help whatsoever. He’s laughing now, drinking a beer in the shade and occasionally carrying on half-conversations with the people around him.

Eventually Lily tires of her quest and moves on to chasing Mark’s dog with reckless abandon.

By the time she starts falling asleep, though, she’s settled snugly in Dustin’s lap, drowsily regaling him with semi-coherent stories as her eyelids droop. Dustin is running a hand softly up and down her back, and Chris leans over to kiss each of them—Lily on the head and Dustin, briefly, on the lips.

It’s kind of odd, he thinks, to be this happy about something he’d never actually imagined experiencing, but he supposes that’s life. Either way, he’s not going to second-guess it, he decides, sinking down to sit next to Dustin, who wraps his other arm around Chris’s shoulders and kisses his temple lightly.


End file.
